“Bueller?… Bueller?… Bueller?”

If you’ve ever submitted product feedback through a customer support widget like Intercom or Zendesk, you know how much of a lost, black hole it can feel like.

Yet, for many companies, that’s exactly where product feedback goes, never to be seen or heard from again.

It’s not Customer Success’s fault.

Customer support and success have important jobs. They’re helping fix problems, educate customers, clear up confusion, and catch bugs.

But triaging problems and being patient with frustrated customers is a totally different skill set than understanding customer needs and making product decisions.

It’s no surprise then that the feedback CS does receive often gets lost in the shuffle, dumped in a backlog somewhere, or filed away, never to be seen again.

What else are they supposed to do?

Let’s take a closer look at these misaligned incentives and responsibilities, and why they leave customers feeling unheard and product teams missing out on priceless customer feedback and connections.

“If you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.” – Ray Kroc, co-founder of McDonalds

“The more you engage with customers, the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” — John Russell, Harley Davidson

“Make something people want.” – YC

There are a lot of catchy sayings and aphorisms about listening to your customers.

And they’re right. It is *really* important to listen to them.

Yet, in practice, there are a lot of reasons that doesn’t happen. Or at least not as well as you would ideally like to.

And the cost is high. Building what internal stakeholders, “visionary” founders, or selfish PMs want instead of what the market is signaling wastes time, capital, and precious opportunity.

In a world where AI is helping us all move much faster, and the cost of building is rapidly falling, building the right thing has never been more important; you’ll either get it right, or someone else in the market will.

Based on conversations with PMs I’ve coached, those I’ve recently interviewed for my new startup, and speaking with friends, here’s the common blockers (and sometimes excuses) for why the voice of the customer isn’t heard as clearly as it should at companies of all sizes.